


From the foreword of Divine Liminality: On the Space Between, Truth, and God

by follypersist



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23613439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follypersist/pseuds/follypersist
Summary: While Sevraq fights the necessary battle of the future, a Friend steals a glance at a deeper look at the past. A footnote to modern thought. An agnostic asterisk to Progressive Asterism. In-character narrated meta.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	From the foreword of Divine Liminality: On the Space Between, Truth, and God

For we who live outside the canon, texts are sparse. Once a week the portcullis opens and the veils part; but clues exist in our collected record that lead us to a more honest conclusion. The use of this conclusion is left as an exercise to the reader. 

In asking what we know about a singular divinity or God we may have as many answers as there have been people; reflections on its possible form shimmer like Independence's many facets. Asterism teaches us that all things that have been and could be catalogued by our limited perception and given name by our limited creations point to forms and aspects of a divinity beyond. Whether that singular state of divinity is ever-present, unreachable, or merely as-yet unreached is a pending question intentionally left unanswered by the clerics of Nideo, an only ever aspirational future for present penitents and philosophers in their eternal empire. 

But with the incidents surrounding The Friend, the best path to elucidation is not in the gilded cells of theology but in the rugged plains of history, that hiccuping pasttime of victors recording their own promising presents and the pasts of those who fell.

In the time of creation and record-keeping for the Golden Branch, the forebears to Stel Apostolos plied matter in new ways and knew ways to traverse the depths of space, and so we thank the serpent's memory. As Stel Kesh extends its lineage of opposition forever backwards, so too do we give our thanks also to the sphinx' carriage of what was known back then. However, despite the fabled flights of The Kingdom Come, the Weight of the world, and the existential threat that Divines seemed in the sagas of that day, another notion sticks out plainly in our path. The origins of Truth such as we know them are here; in a little-remembered planet then-named Sigilia.

When Sigilia is remembered today, it is in tales of sub-marine superweapons or in the myths of Grace and Order, but beyond all these stories is a singular record, scratched from the system: it was known then that _Sigilia was a True alien_. Planetwide personhood is not unknown to the Stel's geobiographers (see the apocryphal _Testament of Acre Seven_ ), but while mere sapient individuation from Sigilia, Quire, Acre, and Earth can account for resin hearts on their own, they hold at length a deeper syllogism. Sigilia was not merely a foreign person, Sigilia was an entity of Truth.

While we have called machines that perform magic "Divines", they are yet to this date entirely mundane. They may be recreated by ourselves or from themselves or from each other, they may have personhoods and memories spanning centuries and powers beyond the reach of our ken, but they are no more Divine than you or me. At any point, at any step, at any length, at any breadth, it is an immutable fact that they are _made to look like us_. The extent of what they may be is only and exactly the extent of what we are. We share in common with them an uncanny lack of true divinity.

That Truth, however, remains apart. Perhaps we will find it in the eyes of God, perhaps in a beating heart. Perhaps we have turned our back on the beings who first lent us life, set fire to their wisdom, and called ourselves kings and princepts of "our" domain. If so, our path forward will be to walk the prophet's path. To be a prophet is to deny one's own godhood.


End file.
